


Easy Blusher

by Prim_the_Amazing



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Blushing, Crushes, Illustrated, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-20
Updated: 2017-09-20
Packaged: 2019-01-01 01:20:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12145500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prim_the_Amazing/pseuds/Prim_the_Amazing
Summary: “You’re red.”“... Well I’m definitely not dramatic enough to be a Blue. Did that non sequitur have a point?”“No, like, your face is red. You’re flushed.”-Grif, with his brand new whiter-than-wonder-bread skin grafts, can blush for the first time in his life. It's a problem.





	Easy Blusher

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a-taller-tale's post: After the surgery, Grif’s facial skin graft always flushes around Simmons, and it’s extremely obvious. Simmons is worried something’s wrong and gets really close to check on him when they’re out of armor. Inspired by taller.

No one, including Grif, notices it straight away. Grif’s too distracted by the pain, and the rest of Red Team’s too busy working out the bugs in Simmons’ brand new (okay, recycled) wiring. But eventually the pain fades, the aches only occasionally spiking briefly back up with a vengeance, and Simmons seems to become as functional as he’ll ever be again.

And that's when they notice it. 

* * *

They’re just finishing up with running laps. Donut has an infuriatingly bottomless font of energy and seemingly innocent comments about how Sarge is really drilling him deep. Simmons gives it a hundred percent just like every time, and ends up wheezing like a dying animal just like every time as well. Lopez is there for some reason, running mechanically and steadily. Sarge’s exercise seems to mainly consist of standing in place and shouting or alternatively shooting at them to “encourage” them or some bullshit like that. Grif gave up offering to switch off with Sarge years ago and just concentrates his efforts on only speeding up to a barely acceptable jog when he’s within shotgun distance and then slowing right back down as soon as he’s out. He’s gotten to be a pretty good judge of knowing when he’s within shooting range of certain weapons.

When they’re done, Grif, as per usual, is the loudest one with his complaints despite being the least tired one. Donut, the oh-so-innocent snake in the grass asshole, vanishes immediately and without a trace to take first claim of the shower and use up all of the hot water. Simmons is too exhausted and too much of a kissass besides to do anything but pant. Sarge thinks everything is fine and dandy, besides Grif’s continued flagrant insubordination, and everything would be just perfect if he could just fix that last little problem with a bullet to the face. Lopez, well, who knows what he’s saying, actually, but it doesn’t matter since Sarge just imagines that to be whatever he wants it to be.

Sarge has just managed to distract himself from threatening Grif by having another one of his imaginary conversations with Lopez when Simmons takes his helmet off to gulp down a bottle of water. Grif’s way ahead of him, of course, and hands him the last one left as he drinks from his own canteen.

Simmons is flushed and sweaty, and his hair is sticking up strangely in some places and plastered to his skull in others thanks to the combination of copious sweat and helmet hair. Kinda like someone messed it up by running their hands through it, in fact. Simmons goes ahead and does just that as he twists the cap of his bottle off with his teeth, and Grif consciously stops himself from blinking, keeping his gaze casual.

Simmons looks at him strangely once he’s finished drinking anyways.

“What?” Grif asks.

“You’re red.”

“... Well I’m definitely not dramatic enough to be a Blue. Did that non sequitur have a point?”

“No, like, your _face_ is red. You’re flushed.” 

Now Grif does allow himself to blink because it’s a subject he’s allowed to acknowledge, unlike other much more forbidden subjects such as Why Do I Like Simmons’ Ass So Much It Isn’t Even That Good Of An Ass, or Why Did His Gigglesnort Make Me Want To Smile It Was Objectively Gross.

“My face is brown.”

“I _know--_ the other side of your face! My face! Your-- ugh, you know what I mean.”

He does know, he suddenly realizes. Those pale ass skin grafts that now decorate the left side of his body. Grif has freckles now, except it’s nowhere near as hot as he thinks it is on others, although he blames the Frankenstein-ian stitching and his lack of a narcissism complex on that.

“You must be in worse shape than I thought if alternating walking more sluggishly than a granny with arthritis or jogging slower than the average walking pace has you flushed,” Simmons remarks, and then turns his focus back to his water bottle.

He can also blush now, apparently. Well. That’s okay. Not a problem. He’ll just have to keep it in mind whenever he looks at Simmons for too long and gets… stupid. It doesn’t happen too often anyways.

Except, as he finds out later to his horror, it _does._ When they’re in the changing room and Simmons is fussily folding his kevlar suit just right before he heads into the showers while wearing nothing but a quite frankly unnecessarily tiny towel. When they’ve kept watch for hours and hours and he’s tired enough to let Grif slump against him as he whines, quietly resting his own head on him despite his hypocritic scolding, just as tired. When Grif actually manages to get him to laugh, when they forget themselves and sit a hair too closely together, when he at last relaxes and unwinds and starts joking around and bitching with him and he says something that-- in the right context-- it could be misconstrued-- Grif could self indulgently replay those words in his head later in the night as he’s lying in his bed alone and--

It turns out that you can’t suppress blushing through sheer iron force of will, no matter how important it is to keep your crush on the downlow.

“Goodnight,” Simmons says from across their room.

“Night,” says Grif, who’d gone to bed like an hour ago. He rolls over and squints over at Simmons’ side of the room. It’s not so dark; Simmons has got the lamp at the side of his bed on.

Simmons also has his shirt off. He’d used to sleep like a prude with as much clothes on him as he could get away with, even socks, but ever since the whole ‘donating roughly half of my body to my shitty teammate like a crazy person’ thing he hasn’t been able to sleep with a shirt on, said it snagged and pulled uncomfortably on the metal bits. Grif’s noticed that he wears a pair of pants so loose he’s pretty sure he stole them from Grif too, but he doesn’t mention it. Donating a pair of _pants_ is the least he can do.

As if he isn’t enjoying the fuck out of the view.

“Grif?” Simmons asks, and he abruptly remembers that Simmons can see as well as he can, that the part of his face that isn’t hidden by the pillow is his stupid fucking pale side. Over two decades worth of honing his poker face to perfection, and he’s foiled by one tank and an overly generous pasty nerd. Grif’s always known that life is unfair, and here’s his proof, as if the one-man draft hadn’t been enough evidence.

“Hmm?” he hums faux sleepily even though he isn’t all that sleepy at all any longer, closing his eyes.

“You’re flushed again.”

“Maybe your weak skin got a sunburn,” he suggests.

“Sarge doesn’t let us out of the base when we aren’t wearing our armor.”

A hand lands on his forehead and Grif’s eyes fly open. He could’ve pretended to fall asleep mid sentence, a move he’s pulled more than once to escape an awkward conversation, but there goes that escape, he guesses. He looks up at Simmons, who’s crouching by his bed with a concerned expression scrunching up his face.

“Are you sick? Because you’ve been flushed a lot lately.”

Holy shit yes. Not only would he be able to dodge the ‘it turns out that I’ve been cheating with my coloration this entire time and am actually a really easy blusher and should probably not have teased you so much about going red like a traffic light at the drop of a hat so much’ convo, but he might actually be able to dodge some work at the same time! Simmons has next to none patience for his laziness, but he can get pretty soft in certain circumstances (see: giving Grif the majority of his organs).

“Dying,” Grif confirms, and makes a textbook perfect fake cough.

Simmons hand retreats and Grif relaxes. Simmons frowns.

“But you’re not flushed any longer now.”

“Huh. Weird. Well, it’s probably just a lesson in hubris and mystery about how humans shouldn’t play god and mess with anatomy so much--”

“Hang on, was that a _blush?”_

“Obviously not.”

“It’s happening again!” It is. Grif can feel his traitorous face heating up again as Simmons calls him out. Simmons, the bastard, looks absolutely delighted.

“Good luck lying to me now, fatass.”

“Oh, fuck off,” he groans, pulling his blanket up over his head like he should’ve at the start of this miserable conversation.

Simmons laughs and fuck, fuck, goddamnit, he’s still blushing as Simmons mocks him. He’s hopeless.

“Night, Grif,” he says with a pat on his shoulder through the blanket, and then he leaves for his bed. The light clicks off and Grif’s peeks out from under his blanket, safe in the darkness. He can just barely see the outline of a Simmons-shaped lump on the other side of the room.

He grumbles to himself as he tries to figure out how to disguise blushing instead of sleeping. Stupid generous, weirdly attractive, lifesaving assholes.

**Author's Note:**

> The illustration was done by [captainkonot!](http://captainkonot.tumblr.com/) Check out their art, it's great!


End file.
